Construction of a Common Medication Formulary and Prototype Drug Information for Use in Undergraduate and Graduate Nursing Program Curricula

Abstract

An essential element in pharmacology course development is the selection of exemplar medications, which are introduced to students as prototype drugs and intended to be representative of the mechanisms, uses, and effects of entire pharmacological categories seen in clinical practice. The purpose of this project was to construct a clinically relevant and pedagogically sound prototype list and most pertinent drug information that could be incorporated across undergraduate and graduate nursing program curricula. Studies have found numerous barriers to effective pharmacologic learning in nursing undergraduate and graduate students, including content saturation and a reliance of memorization‐heavy teaching techniques. While physician‐directed pharmacology education has benefited from consensus pharmacology knowledge objectives and drug lists compiled by the Association of Medical School Pharmacology Chairs, no such counterpart exists for nursing. The concept‐based model of pharmacology education favors using a prototype drug to teach general information for the drug class, and has been proven to effectively respond to proven barriers for pharmacologic learning for nursing students. We developed a formulary to be used by registered nurse (RN), advanced registered nurse practitioner (ARNP), and physician assistant (PA) students utilizing a concept‐based model of pharmacology education. The curated material, which emphasizes medications relevant to family practice and primary care, presents the most applicable nursing interventions, monitoring parameters and side effects for the most commonly used prototype drugs. We collated a list that represents the most commonly used drugs, most frequent and most concerning side effects, as well as pharmacologic information germane to RN, ARNP, and PA licensure examinations. By highlighting these key features of medications, we created a resource that can be used by nursing educators to better serve and educate their students.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.